Sunday, January 30, 2011

A Clear Cut Case

A few months ago, an acquaintance posted on Facebook that she is morally opposed to people posting details on DUI checkpoints. Her thinking was, the checkpoints are established to catch drunk drivers and get them off the road.

I do not know any statistics on the efficiency of such checkpoints.

I agree with her. The most infuriating issue for me related to drunk driving is not that someone might hurt themselves, but that they could harm someone else. During the D.A.R.E. program in school, the office who visited said that during high impact crashes, the alcohol causes your body to relax so the impact is often less, whereas the other person bears the brunt of most physical injury.

I was literally shocked to see a slew of people comment on her status that they always warn their friends and try to spread the word about checkpoints. I'm not sure what would compel you to help and enable someone to break the law and jeopardize the lives of others. To me, those are the core issues in revealing the checkpoint info.

So my question is: do you reveal checkpoint info or do you support the checkpoint's efforts? (You can comment anonymously if you'd like.)

3 comments:

TexasBobbi said...

As a police officers kid, I would keep my mouth shut. I think those who share are being selfish.

Cady said...

I never do, and I typically find out where locations are beforehand since I'm with the media. DUI is too serious of a crime in my opinion.

Liz said...

I agree that you shouldn't notify all of your friends, but I have had dinner with friends, without alcohol, then had one of the friends call me to tell me she got stuck in the checkpoint traffic, so take a different route home. In that case, she was informing me to avoid the traffic, knowing I hadn't been drinking anyhow. However, I agree that the checkpoints have a point. If I knew a friend was drinking enough to not be safe, I wouldn't let them drive away anyhow, so I wouldn't be calling them to avoid a checkpoint. However, I would never send out a mass email "just in case."